Limp Election Drudion

June 2001ce

Hail y’all, the Discorporated,

As the countryside sags trampled underfoot & mouth by the naff gaffs of M.A.F.F., I shall not be voting in this forthcoming election. I really don’t wanna give credibility to this wanton act of city dweller beauracracy – so I'm putting my ‘X’ nowhere at all.* I’m doing nothing for the politician as he has done nothing for me. As the Prime Minister’s mantra (“The countryside is open”) is daily proven to be a lie, I will not vote! I cannot buy into the phoney war of Blair, Hague and Kennedy. They ain’t no power trio and they sure can’t fucking dance!

Black kids disenfranchised from society have commented that all three leaders (ha) look the same – well I’m white and they all look the same to me, as well, baby. Blair says New Labour will have failed until everyone in Britain is accommodated – what a Christian Cop-out. The poor are always amongst us said Jeez. No shit, Sherlock! With that attitude, they surely always shall be. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, better to start somewhere than drain everywhere. Better to spend some money on education of our own nurses than drain the poor Philipines of their precious reserves. Better to dignify teachers with higher wages than send in the clowns who poke and pry into school affairs.

In a secular society, where your worth can only be perceived by the amount of money you take home, the educators of this country must be made to feel as important as we all know them to be. Pay them what they’re due or continue to subdue them. When a country is religious, look to its horizons and the churches and mosques will be the highest citadels. When a country is obsessed with capitalism and money, those highest building will be the banks and the centres of commerce. But when capitalism runs out of control, the lava of greed overflows into the near neighbourhoods, and so those capitalist centres now annex the parks and school playing fields in the name of their Need. What they buy now – our children’s children will pay for later.

And how about John Prescott versus Mullet the Egg Thrower. Go Go Go Mullet! At every turn Prescott has failed our transport system, and at every opportunity he has sold us miles short of his ‘97 promises. Yet one direct hit from Mullet the Egg apparently gives Prescott the excuse to let fly with a left hook – precisely the left hook that I’ve wanted to plant on his smug lard-upholstered squirrel jowls these past two years. Prescott should be sued by the people of Britain for that left hook, because recourse to direct action should be the right of the refusenik activist in the street and not the Fat Bastard politician, to whom that real egg-on-his-face was precisely the metaphor for what the corporate lick-arse Prescott unconsciously wears every day.
You’re a pathetic lard-arsed stooge, John Prescott – a phoney and shallow One-of-us southern northerner who will now mistakenly wear his left hook as a badge of honour. Wrong. Amongst the rogues of Westminster, John Prescott stands in special de-merit. John Prescott is the teacher at school who tells you: “Don’t call me Mr Prescott, call me John,” then sells you out to the headmaster when you need support most. One day, John Prescott will become that lowest of all things that creep: a Labour peer. Nuff Said.

But enough of this fucking election. More importantly I finished the tour, and what a tour! While half the rock‘n’rollers nowadays can’t get on the road for more than a week at a time, you all sustained me for a whole fucking month! When I asked my agent Mick Griffiths to book me into obscure places, it never occurred to me that so many people would turn up. When I played Shepherd Bush Empire last November, a guy yelled, “Hey Julian, you're so local!”
He was so right and I was so moved to find out. Bilston was a heathen glitterstompf I never coulda dreamed of. Morecombe was attended by beautiful women, some even pregnant. Of course London and Manchester and Sheffield and Newcastle were packed solid, but so were shows at Aberystwyth and Worthing! Worthing rocked me! I'm truly moved that so many people brung so much to the party. U-Know!

Of course, I returned home to a deluge of work only to go under with a killer flu after three days, so plans to visit Acid Mothers Temple’s show up in Stirling were smoshed to pieces. Instead, I chose to see them up in Nottingham where Brain Donor’s Doggen and Kevlar reside. We’ve recorded most of the Donor LP in Nottingham, and midweek it’s a thrill to be out on the streets late at night. I’ve recently got to know so many of the Nottingham scene, and half of them were at the Mothers’ show at the Social. Acid Mothers Temple were fantastic and rocked me to the core, though I hasten to add they coulda played two hours longer. This group shakes when it plays. They all shake together and it makes for the most shamanic seething I ever did witness on the rockstage. Kawabata Makoto is a true guitar hero and withers almost every other guitarist I can think of. To see this tall ringleted Japanese shaman in full flight was a true blessing, and I stood transfixed and trying to take in the moment. And Tsuyama Atsushi’s bass playing and singing is a thrill ride of Gene Simmonsian proportions. When he launched into that incredible throat theme from “La Novia”, I done near shat me kex. When they asked me on stage for the final song, I was buzzing so much from observing I could hardly take in the moment. But Cotton Casino's centre stage presence is so axial to the Acid Mothers' performance that I immediately started a chant directed at her supreme Goddess Muse. Cotton puts out such super erotic gyrations as she manipulates the synthesizer and howls – I just started to chant “Give Cotton some, Give Cotton some, Give Cotton some, Give Cotton some.” Then I got down on my hands and knees and snarled lovingly at the elegant axe-wielding Higashi Hiroshi and the ever-mugging Tsuyama, and crawled over to Cotton, whom I hoisted high on my shoulders. Soon she was high enough to kick her synthesizer keyboard as I chanted, and the whole thing was over before I knew it. Thank you Kawabata and company, you are indeed troubadours from Another Heavenly World. But, of course already, U-Know!

Doggen and Kevlar vibrated with me for the rest of the evening. We gotta heads down meeting about the Brain Donor album, which is gonna be released in mid-July. Of course, the second single will be released next month and is even better than the first one. “Get off your Pretty Face” features Doggen’s greatest speed metal guitar solo ever and comes in a fluorescent pink bag with foiled lettering. Then, it’s time for the wonderfully-titled album LOVE PEACE & FUCK. You gotta get the double white vinyl in fluorescent lime green gatefold if you know what's good for you. We've worked overtime to make this a truly righteous shamanic artefact. Goes all the way and forgets to back off!

Finally, this address drudion has been longer than most so I'll wait until next month to clue you into the October nights at the British Museum. Suffice to say, it’ll be a fist-clenched gasser of “EDUCATION! EDUCATION! EDUCATION!”

If I were Britannia, I’d waive the rules,

Mr. DRUDE

* Not voting is my statement of protest, and please don't think I’m in any way sitting in judgement of those who chose to do so. I totally understand those of you who chose to USE their vote as their way of protesting (my wife always does). But, while I’m fully aware that in many countries women are only just gaining the vote, and that the right to vote is not something we should take for granted, in Britain it seems TO ME that spin and manoeuvring has eroded all the parties to such an extent that they are all just degrees of the same patriarchal thought process.